Suppressing carrier removal error in the Fourier transform method for interferogram analysis

A new carrier removal method for interferogram analysis using the Fourier transform is presented. The proposed method can be used to suppress the carrier removal error as well as the spectral leakage error. First, the carrier frequencies are estimated with the spectral centroid of the up sidelobe of the apodized interferogram, and then the up sidelobe can be shifted to the origin in the frequency domain by multiplying the original interferogram by a constructed plane reference wave. The influence of the carrier frequencies without an integer multiple of the frequency interval and the window function for apodization of the interferogram can be avoided in our work. The simulation and experimental results show that this method is effective for phase measurement with a high accuracy from a single interferogram.